Courtesy of Megan at Live from the WTC, an explanation of why, exactly, drugs cost so much less in the EU. It's far more interesting than you'd probably think, and written for the layman, as Megan usually does w/ these economic issues.
Lefties in America have been screaming about this for years – screaming, that is, that we are allowing our evil Pharmaceutical Giants to charge outrageous prices for their products, when prices in Europe show that the actual price of the product is really much lower.
If you haven’t picked out the problem with this argument already, it’s that the lefties have forgotten one little thing: the ENORMOUS cost of developing drugs. The average drug has to make $500 million to earn back all the R&D costs, not only for itself but for the 999 other compounds that didn’t work.
That's just the intro though, she explains much more in the full version.
This was posted many moons ago, but at least someone is finally getting down to the truth about this issue, and maybe others will read it and realize that we in your local pharmacy don't control the cost of the drugs and those people will stop bitching at us for it :) If I could give it to you for free, believe me buddy I would... too bad we only have the "free-loaders" in this society that can get them for free.. but that's a totally different subject... ;)